The Dark Side of Tourism

Introduction

Tourism and travelling, is always beautiful terms to describe our dream of visiting beautiful places and running away from our daily routine as well as hustle bustle life. Working in tourism industry is even a “glamorous” and “attractive” job as widely recognized, even by myself. Three years ago, with the passion and interest in geography, culture and economics, I have decided to study Tourism Management, regardless knowing that I might not receive high-paid salary as other job. At first, my resolve was moved and wavered because of the fear of uncertainty. Is Tourism really a career path for me?  Can I make good money out of it? Is it really my interest?       

My doubts are answered after 8 semesters studying here and I don’t regret of studying the course anymore. While finding out my goal and motivation, I discovered and learned more than “what is tourism?” The good sides and of course the unethical sides of tourism that brought up my concern to share them here.

#1 Making profit vs protecting environment

Yes, it is an old grandma story again, but for me, knowing that tourism operators just treated the environment resources as a golden opportunity to make money, money and money, it just breaks my heart…. Think of these, is tourism business still ethical?

• Do you know that an average golf course in a tropical country such as Thailand needs 1500kg of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides per year and uses as much water as 60,000 rural villagers?
• Do you know that 1 trekking tourist in Nepal can use four to 5 kilograms of fuel wood a day?
• Do you know that in average, passengers on a cruise ship each account for 3.5kg of garbage daily - compared with the 0.8kg each generated by the less well-endowed folk on shore?

Source: Nature Net <http://www.naturenet.net/education/tourism.html>

Just like the case of “The Lemonade Stand” shared by Ms Diana in class, doing CSR and be 100% ethical is just too ideal to apply it in our real life world. By the time we argue over ethical issues, the best way is to do nothing, but, how is it possible?! We need to make living, and while doing businesses, we damage and exploit the natural resources intentionally and unintentionally. Hence, I would say it is very difficult to achieve especially in developing countries like us!

Ironically, as a scuba diver and also an ex-part time worker at dive center, my responsibility is to protect the marine environment and aquatic life. However, I have to admit, due to lack of experience and expertise, divers sometimes do kick off the coral reef unintentionally. Along the travel journey to dive, divers have most probably caused to co2 gas emission, diesel leakage, sewage problem, and grey water waste. Even I found myself in guilty in between completion of the diving course and also the damages I made. So what to do? Stop scuba diving business that contributed to the economy? Stop letting locals and foreigners to visit all the pulaus in Malaysia? It doesn’t work that way…For me, bearing the guiltiness in mind, I will just hope to join “greener” dive package next time when I have more budget as I know, being “green” is not cheap too!       

     

#2 Special interest tourism vs society norms and values

Special interest tourism caters tourists who have extraordinary request and demand such as sex tourism, dark tourism, and euthanasia (suicide) tourism.

In most of the conservative countries like Malaysia, sex is a  opic and is only accepted after marriage. For example, it is unethical to share topic as such in front of underage children and at incorrect occasion, not to say having sex with them. Obviously, sex and LGBT tosm caused a contradiction in these values because child prostitution, human trafficking, infective disease (AIDS, HIV etc), pornography, and sexual abuse issues do actively exist in Brazil, Thailand, Cambodia and Mexico. We might say it is unethicauril to force the child and women into prostitution, however sex tourism saves them from starving and poverty, in lucky cases they get married to their wealthy partner. According to Laws.com, a recent studies show that the Sex Tourism industry generates earnings over $30 billion annually!

Source: Laws.com, <http://sex-crimes.laws.com/prostitution/4-facts-that-you-need-to-know-about-sex-tourism#sthash.PvxTeoH3.dpuf>

In addition, unusual culture hunting and participation in death, haunted destinations and taboos are showing a good example of the conflict between dark tourism and social value. For example, in common social value, we are supposed to respect and must not interrupt the indigenous culture. However, due to curiosity and tourism benefit purpose, people are selling dark tours packages and arranging their own dark itineraries. For example, Hong Kong famous ghost hunter cameraman team “Guai Tam”, have always triggered local aboriginal people’s anger while they are demonstrating their spiritual ceremonies. As a result, they often receive complaints from the audiences and warning from the supernature specialists.

Not only that, euthanasia tourism organizes trips for potential suicide candidate to where euthanasia is permitted. Currently Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Mexico and Oregon (USA) (DeMond S.M. and Gonzalex C. , 2012) have laws allowing certain methods of assisted suicide. No doubt, it is a bright contrast to the traditional mindset of people “No way of encouraging people to die in such way!”  Nonetheless, under some circumstances of law, why not?

Source: DeMond S.M. and Gonzalex C. (2012). When death is the destination: the business of death tourism- despite social and leagal implicaitons, vol 7, no.3-2013, pp.293-306-5, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

#3 Ensuring guest experience vs Tourists Trap

Since semester 1, we are trained by our lecturers to be ethical and make sure we know how to improve service quality and ensure guest visiting experience. On the other hand, we are taught to brainstorm how to “squeeze” additional income from tourists and make them spend more (and of course, this makes them to complain more), which we called “tourists trap”.  It is contradictory huh? Well, it is part of the dark side of tourism.  I have read an interesting book “The Dark Side of Disney” few days ago, come to my surprise, the author described a lot of unethical tourists traps at Disneyland. For instance, vague free gift vouchers given to please an unhappy customer are to be claimed on plane. Yes, you will get a free snack pack when you are on your return flight instead of on-spot claim. Others include inducing customers to buy Full Day Pass that might have to pay for extra services and facilities.

In short, like any other businesses, tourism is not as wonderful and 100% ethical as dreamed of and expected. Despite all these, I find tourism is still very interesting to me and worth of discussion. And perhaps one day, we will find a balance between tourism development and ethics.

     

(approximately 1200 words)